Peter O'Donnell (Texas)
| Peter O'Donnell | |
|---|---|
| Texas Republican State Chairman | |
|
In office 1962–1969 |
|
| Succeeded by | William Steger |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
April 21, 1924 Dallas, Texas, USA |
| Spouse(s) | Edith Jones O'Donnell |
| Residence | Dallas, Texas |
| Alma mater |
Sewanee: The University of the South |
| Profession | Investor and Philanthropist |
Sewanee: The University of the South
Peter J. O'Donnell, Jr. (born April 21, 1924), is a businessman, securities investor, and philanthropist from his native Dallas. From 1962 to 1969, he was the Texas Republican state chairman. In 1963, he was also the national chairman of the Draft Goldwater Committee.
O'Donnell was reared in Highland Park, near Dallas. He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Sewanee: The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, and a Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After college, he worked first in a small bank and then tried his hand at real estate. However, his financial success came in the securities industry.
In 1957, O'Donnell and his wife, the former Edith Jones (born c. 1926), a graduate in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin, founded the O'Donnell Foundation, with the principal goal of improving higher education in Texas. He is the president and she the secretary of the foundation. The two have contributed tens of millions of dollars, much of it anonymously, toward various educational entities,both public and private. The O'Donnell Foundation is the fifth largest independent foundation in Dallas. In 1983, the UT regents established the Peter O'Donnell, Jr., Centennial Chair in Computing Systems."No one in history has had a greater impact on science and engineering in Texas than Peter O'Donnell," said J. Tinsley Oden, the mathematician and engineering professor and director of the UT Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences.
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